The English Agent Read online

  The sound of applause jolted her back into the present. She opened her eyes. ‘Oh brava, brava,’ Penelope said. ‘Wasn’t she just marvellous. Thank you so much for suggesting this, ducks.’

  As the applause died down and Myra left, people began shuffling in their seats and collecting their things, ready to leave. Vera noticed the man putting back on his fedora. She watched as he sidled into the aisle, but lost him in the river of people exiting at the same time. ‘I suppose we’d better be on our way,’ Penelope said, stuffing the purple wool and needles into her gas mask case.

  Vera and Penelope shifted with the others towards the door. As they fanned out with the crowd into the winter air outside, Vera checked her watch, letting Penelope get in front of her. Penelope was already at the steps when Vera called her. ‘Penny – you go on ahead, I’ve just remembered something.’ And when Penelope said she’d wait, Vera said not to worry; they’d catch up again soon. Penelope waved goodbye, and tripped off into the swirling crowds of Trafalgar Square.

  Vera turned on her toe and went back, pushing against the tide of people, all in a rush to get back to their desks: ‘I’m so sorry, I do apologise,’ she said, nudging and shoving until she reached the now-empty room where the concert had been held. Two women were just beginning to clear away the chairs. Vera rushed to the row where the man with the fedora had sat. His carefully folded programme was still there, underneath the chair. Vera leant over to pick it up. I am merely collecting a memento of the concert, she told herself as she plucked up the sheet of paper and folded it again and again until it was a tiny rectangle, which she pushed deep into the pocket of her coat, underneath her handkerchief.

  She paused to check her watch, then walked swiftly out.

  Edie

  If she hurried, she could finish in time, Edie thought. Her needles rattled against each other and the red wool pulled through her index finger, cutting into the ever-present blister: it was her Morse finger. But she was trying not to think about coding, for once. When she was out of the apartment, in these brief snatches of daylight and conversation, it didn’t do to dwell on what lay waiting for her on her return: the hours of squinting at scribbled messages, laboriously transposing the letters into code from her poem-crib, and then putting the whole thing into Morse, struggling to get through it all in the scheduled time. Felix’s lists of questions got longer each day. And the replies from London, decoded in the same exhausting system, took forever. She struggled with the cold, the hunger, the sleeplessness, and the dread that enveloped her like a shroud every time she opened her wireless transmitter. How long could her luck last?

  She looked up at the clock above the bar. Justine wasn’t late. There was no need to worry – not yet, at least. And out here in a café, with her knitting and her French identity card, she was safer than she was alone in her apartment, Edie reasoned. And it was warm, here, with the sun streaming in through the café windows, much warmer than her coffin-cold room. Her needles clacked on, the almost-finished wool a tangled red nest on top of the round café table, next to her half-drunk café au lait.

  Usually Justine left messages for London in agreed ‘letter-boxes’ scattered throughout the city: behind a loose brick in an alleyway, inside prayer books in church, or newspapers left on a park bench at a designated time. Edie, in turn, left the decoded replies in other places: a hole in a tree trunk, underneath a loose paving slab, under the wheel of a car parked outside Claude’s garage. It wasn’t safe for her to be seen with Justine very often, but sometimes they agreed to meet in person, and today was one of those days. Edie looked forward to these encounters; the rest of the time she felt so alone, with just the dots and dashes to connect her with Miss Atkins, London, and home.

  She began to cast off. There would be just enough wool, she judged. The last of it was like a trickle of blood, twisting down from a cut finger onto the mirrored table top. When she’d finished, biting off the wool and pocketing her needles, she held up her creation and had a good look at it: a dark red pixie hat – perfect for a little girl. She remembered her mother reading ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ to her as a child. The girl in the dark forest never stood a chance against the cunning wolf, did she? As a child she’d had Perrault’s Fairy Tales in French and Grimm’s Fairy Tales in English on her nursery bookshelves. The two versions of Little Red Riding Hood muddled together in her memory. No matter – this knitted red hat would do very nicely for a little French girl, left alone in the countryside with her grandparents, whilst her mother—

  The bell jangled as the opening café door announced a customer. Edie looked up. The open door let in a gust of chill air, bringing Justine with it. Edie watched her stride over, a moving silhouette against the bright winter sunshine that flooded in through the plate-glass frontage. Edie stood up, and the two women embraced, kissing on each cheek. Edie fizzed at the touch of another human being. For days all she’d felt was the cold coding contact against her fingers. Justine’s cheeks were soft, her embrace definite and strong. She smelled of some kind of lemony soap, and smoke from the cigarettes that were never far from her lips.

  Justine called to the waiter to bring her a coffee and they both sat down at the table. Justine took out her tobacco pouch and immediately began creating one of her usual skinny roll-ups. Beyond her, outside the café windows, occasional cars and bicycles passed. A seagull shot upwards in the empty blue sky. In that moment they could be just two young Parisian women meeting for a coffee and a gossip. Edie could hear the chink of metal against china as the waiter prepared Justine’s coffee.

  ‘I’ve just finished this,’ said Edie, holding out the hat.

  ‘Very nice,’ said Justine, her eyes darting over the red wool as if searching for dropped stitches. Her match flared against her roll-up. ‘A little small, no?’

  ‘It’s not for me, dear,’ Edie laughed. ‘It’s for you – for your daughter.’

  ‘How do you know about my daughter?’ Justine said, eyes narrowed, cigarette halfway to her lips.

  How do you think I know, Edie thought. A mother knows a mother. Even a murdering mother like me, who let her child be killed before it had the chance of life. Aloud she said, ‘The little girl at the farmhouse window, the night I arrived?’ The café was empty; it was safe to talk.

  ‘But I never said—’ Justine broke off, frowning.

  ‘You didn’t need to. I won’t say anything. Don’t worry.’ Edie touched Justine lightly on the forearm. ‘I had a friend with a little girl about the same age, back in—’ She almost said England, but stopped herself just in time. ‘Back home. And she was always worrying about the child, thinking she’d get cold in wintertime, and I just thought, when I saw this wool for sale, that it would make a perfect hat for a little girl.’ She wanted to tell Justine more about Bea, and Bea’s daughter, more about everything that happened in the summer of 1942. But she remembered that all that had happened to Gunner Edith Lightwater, a British soldier. That girl doesn’t exist any more, she reminded herself.

  Justine was still frowning, taking quick drags of her cigarette as if sipping soda through a straw.

  ‘And I also,’ Edie began. She had the sudden urge to confide, to tell Justine about her own baby, the one they’d sucked from her, in that squalid hotel. Was it a little girl? She’d never know. ‘I also had,’ she began again, thinking it might be easier to articulate, to unburden, in French. But just then the waiter arrived at their table.

  Justine’s coffee was small and black: a doll-sized cup. She knocked it back, the same way Edie remembered the men knocking back their glasses of port, after the speech, when they’d had her pre-departure dinner: hurling it into their open mouths and wincing, afterwards, as if it were a dose of medicine. Edie didn’t drink. Not since that night at the 400 Club, not since the American soldier, with his grasping hands and wet lips, not since then – never again.

  ‘It’s very kind of you,’ Justine said at last, putting her empty coffee cup down on the table. She looked away out of the window
. ‘You’re a very thoughtful person,’ she said. She remained turned away, so Edie couldn’t see her face. Justine touched her nose with the back of her hand, cleared her throat, and took another drag of the cigarette before returning her gaze to Edie. ‘Thank you,’ she said, picking up the hat. ‘She will love it.’

  Edie sipped her café au lait, now just tepid. Justine put the red bonnet in her pocket, and Edie asked if her daughter knew the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Justine said yes, of course, it was one of her favourites. It was a relief to talk about something normal, to pretend, just for a few minutes, that they were just friends, meeting, drinking coffee, passing pleasantries. How did the story end, Edie wondered, confusing the two versions she’d read as a child.

  ‘The wolf eats the girl,’ Justine said, pushing the butt of her cigarette into a rusted ashtray in the centre of the table. Edie wondered if there wasn’t a happy ending. Didn’t the grandmother and Red Riding Hood outwit the wolf? Wasn’t there a woodcutter who helped? ‘Perhaps in your version,’ Justine said. And they were so engaged in their conversation about fairy tales that Edie barely noticed the bell jangle as the café door opened to let in another customer, who passed their table in a waft of cool air. ‘You British are very good at inventing happy endings,’ Justine laughed, leaning back in her chair. ‘We French are more realistic,’ she said, sparking up another roll-up. They’d moved on to discussing the Perrault version of ‘Sleeping Beauty’, which didn’t stop with the happy-ever-after kiss, but moved on to darker themes – cannibalism and regicide.

  They talked some more; Edie asked Justine about her daughter, left with her grandparents on the farm. ‘It’s safer. There’s more food there,’ Justine said simply. She tried to visit as often as she could, she said. When supplies were parachuted in, it was a good excuse to get out of the city. The night Edie arrived was the first time she’d seen her daughter for weeks, she said. Edie thought about the evacuees they’d had in the big house at home, and how Bea had left her little girl behind, a secret, when she’d joined the ATS. And she thought again about her own shameful brush with motherhood: the blood on the sheets, the grinding pain in her abdomen.

  The waiter drifted past, flicking a cloth at the table tops, asking if they wanted another coffee. Justine, checking her watch, said no, she had to go. Edie had finished her coffee, the remains clinging like soap scum inside the cup. She asked for another one. Surely it would be safe to linger in this café just a little longer? Why not enjoy the winter sunshine, pretend the big bad wolf wasn’t waiting somewhere out there. She stood up to kiss Justine goodbye and Justine thanked her again for the hat. As she was leaving, Edie called after her.

  ‘I forgot to ask – your daughter: what’s her name?’

  ‘Violette.’

  ‘Such a pretty name. Give her a kiss from me.’

  ‘I will,’ Justine said. And she smiled and waved as she passed in front of the wide glass frontage.

  Edie imagined her going back to the farmhouse in the fields, imagined a little girl running towards her and shouting ‘Maman, Maman!’, arms outstretched. Justine must be wrong, she thought, picturing little Violette in the red pixie hat, walking hand-in-hand with her mother to the farmhouse door. The fairy tale can’t end with the wolf; the wolf can’t win.

  As Justine disappeared into the morning street, Edie turned away from the window. Whilst she’d been waving goodbye, the waiter had brought her a fresh cup of coffee. The sun glanced off the table tops, and she realised how round and shiny they were, like the powder compact Miss Atkins had given her.

  With that thought, Edie took the silver compact from her jacket pocket. She flipped it open and it lay coolly in her palm. She wiped the puff onto the creamy powder. Frenchwomen had no qualms about putting on make-up in public, Justine had told her. Edie smoothed the velvety powder over her cheeks and nose, covering up her freckles. She took the lipstick Justine had given her out of her pocket. The colour didn’t suit her – a bold cyclamen, which she would never have dared wear at home. It’s about making an effort, Justine had said. Glamour is a kind of resistance. Those grey mice – that was how she referred to the German women who came to Occupied Paris to work – can never match us for beauty or charm, and that is our victory!

  That is our victory, Edie thought, pulling off the metal top of the lipstick case and swivelling up what was left of the buttery-pink cylinder. ‘Vive la France,’ she mouthed at her own reflection in the circle of glass, smacking her lips together until they looked like the petals of forest flowers. The wolf doesn’t win.

  It was only as she was about to close the powder compact that she noticed the man in the long coat. She saw him in the periphery of her reflection in the mirror, standing at the bar, smoking. But when she caught his eye, he turned abruptly away.

  She snapped the powder compact shut, and took out her purse. She unrolled a note, left it under the undrunk café au lait, and stood up to go.

  The bell tinkled as she left, and she remembered then that she’d heard it earlier. It must have been when the man in the coat had walked in, walked past, just as Justine said – what was it? – You British are very good at inventing happy endings. Edie walked quickly away across the street, resisting the urge to break into a run – to run all the way to Grandmother’s house.

  Vera

  ‘Exploding rats, whatever next?’ Buckmaster chuckled. ‘I say, Vera, come and have a look at this.’ Vera’s heels tip-tapped on the Natural History Museum’s marble floor as she walked over to where Buckmaster and Fraser-Smith were looking at the new sabotage prototypes. Boys and their toys, she thought wearily, glancing round the demonstration room, which, despite the vaulted ceiling and stained-glass windows, had something of a garden-shed feel about it. She thought of the stack of paperwork piling up on her desk in her absence as she looked down at where Buckmaster pointed a curious finger.

  ‘I don’t think it will offer as much utility as the exploding bicycle pump,’ she said, coming to a halt in front of the card table by the column. ‘That’s been very effective in the field, the agents tell me.’ She prodded the matted fur of the stuffed beast, laid out proudly on the green baize like a royal flush. Ghastly thing. ‘And what about the damp?’

  ‘Damp?’ said Buckmaster, chewing on his pipe stem.

  ‘I’m only thinking of its efficacy. Rats live in damp places, like sewers and gutters. This weapon will have to be placed somewhere wet, therefore, and won’t that affect the explosive material?’

  Buckmaster turned to look at Fraser-Smith, who twisted his mouth down at the corners and tugged his moustache. ‘She might have a point,’ he conceded eventually.

  ‘Well, don’t take my word for it; I’m hardly an expert in this sort of bricolage,’ said Vera. ‘But I do know that the bicycle pumps pack up nicely with the Stens in the crates, and they have a track record of use in the field.’ She saw Buckmaster and Fraser-Smith exchanging looks. It was as her mother had always told her, she realised: sometimes one had to try not to be so obviously right where men and their egos were concerned. ‘But really, it’s your decision of course – you men know far more about these Q-gadgets than I do,’ she added, taking out her cigarettes.

  She watched Buckmaster and Fraser-Smith in earnest conversation, and let her mind drift a little, with the cigarette smoke. Should she have told Penelope about Dick and the engagement, earlier on? It did force her hand, rather. Penelope wasn’t one to sit tight on gossip. But wasn’t that the point?

  Fraser-Smith was nodding and making notes on a clipboard as Buckmaster gesticulated, creating invisible devices in the stone-cold museum air. Vera exhaled, thinking of that Dericourt chap. If ever there was an obvious rogue – but Buckmaster hadn’t even questioned his credentials. If Buckmaster was prepared to be so lax about Dericourt then perhaps it was time to reveal the truth about her own background?

  Afterwards Buckmaster, on good form, invited both Vera and Fraser-Smith to the Hoop and Toy, just round the corner. Fraser-Smith declined,
saying his wife had invited people to supper, and disappeared down the rabbit hole of South Kensington Tube Station. ‘Well, all I’ve got waiting at home for me is a Spam sandwich – it’s her bridge night,’ said Buckmaster. ‘Care to join me for a snifter, Vera?’

  Vera squinted at her watch – she could barely make out the face in the moonless night. There was no airport run tonight. It was already past six and home was just a few streets away. A chill winter drizzle had just started to fall. ‘Why not?’ she said, thinking that perhaps this was the opportunity she’d been waiting for.

  ‘Do you play bridge, Vee?’ Buckmaster said as they walked across Exhibition Road, dodging bicycles and scurrying commuters in the gloom. ‘I imagine you’d be rather a bridge fiend, what with your memory,’ he continued. ‘The wife won’t partner me these days, says I can’t be trusted, and to be honest, I don’t mind. Crosswords, that’s the thing, eh?’ Vera nodded. He was right. She had been good at bridge, very good in fact. But one particular afternoon had put her off the game for good, she remembered, as they made their way towards the pub.